The ORDER BY Keyword

The ORDER BY keyword is used to sort the data in a recordset.

The ORDER BY Keyword

The ORDER BY keyword is used to sort the data in a recordset.

The ORDER BY keyword sort the records in ascending order by default.

If you want to sort the records in a descending order, you can use the DESC keyword.

Syntax

SELECT column_name(s)

FROM table_name

ORDER BY column_name(s) ASC|DESC

To learn more about SQL, please visit our SQL tutorial.

Example

The following example selects all the data stored in the "Persons" table, and sorts the result by the "Age" column:

$con = mysql_connect("localhost","peter","abc123");

if (!$con)

  {

  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());

  }

mysql_select_db("my_db", $con);

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM Persons ORDER BY age");

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))

  {

  echo $row['FirstName'];

  echo " " . $row['LastName'];

  echo " " . $row['Age'];

  echo "
";

  }

mysql_close($con);

?>

The output of the code above will be:

Glenn Quagmire 33

Peter Griffin 35

Order by Two Columns

It is also possible to order by more than one column. When ordering by more than one column, the second column is only used if the values in the first column are equal:

SELECT column_name(s)

FROM table_name

ORDER BY column1, column2